Eternal Perspectives

Not many of us like to have our cages rattled or our chains jerked. We like the status quo, for the most part, and view events or information contrary to our perception of the world as threats and intrusive.

This is why we choose friends that think like us, share our values, and respect our boundaries. It’s why we go to the churches that we do. We want to be affirmed and confirmed in our correct and biblical viewpoints, as well as in biases and blind spots. We have our comfort zones, after all, and feel entitled to them.

Jesus will have none of it. He is interfering, intrusive, meddling, prying, and nosey. He is a continual threat to our categories and world view. Just when we think we’ve got our theology and Christian life all figured out and nailed down, we hear a sermon or read a passage that raises a question.

Of course, we can shoot the messenger if it’s a sermon or book, but when the book happens to be the Bible . . . well, maybe we gloss over it or mark as something to be studied and considered later. Later, as in “when I get to heaven I’m going to ask God about that.”

When we are confronted with such information, we can do one of two things with it: we can assimilate it or we can accommodate it. To assimilate new facts or ideas means to fit them into our pre-existing categories; we like to assimilate because we don’t have to change. Or we don’t have to change in a direction that we don’t want to go. Assimilation is our friend.

Accommodation, however, means we have to create new categories or abandon old ones that don’t fit any longer. Accommodation is being transformed by the renewing of our mind, conformed to the image of Christ. Accommodation is sanctification.

Some day, read one or all of the gospels through the eyes of a Pharisee, Sadducee, or any other of the many opponents Jesus accumulated during His ministry in Judea. You’ll find a troublemaker, an iconoclast, and – above all – serious threat to the lives of the comfortable. You’ll be disturbed. That’s Jesus: disturbing the comfortable, comforting the disturbed.

Next: Jesus the Holy Irritation, Part One

For the people in power during the days of Jesus, life was pretty good. They didn’t like being the subjects of the Roman empire, but they had been granted some special privileges that made it palatable and tolerable, if not desirable.

Most of all, the “haves” of the day enjoyed a pretty comfortable and prestigious lifestyle. While the zealots, remnant, and other “have-nots” may have been looking for a Deliverer, the in-crowd had other things on their collective minds. “If we let Him go on like this,” whined the chief priests and Pharisees, “all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.”

No room for accommodation in their minds. Maintain the status quo. Crush or crucify anything or Anybody that poses a threat.

Jesus knew what they were like, of course, but that didn’t deter Him from confronting them. He wasn’t about to pander to the elite, powerful, or “righteous.” So He said things that threatened them and angered them. He did it deliberately and frequently because the truth and holiness were more important to Him than His own safety or comfort.

Here’s an apple cart that Jesus discovered and upset:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy.’
“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.
“For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
“If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
“Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” – Mt 5.43-48

To be “perfect” does not mean to be sinless or without any imperfection (although this is certainly true of God). One lexicon defines perfection as “consummate human integrity and virtue; full grown, adult, of full age, mature.” This is the standard of behavior Jesus establishes.

The Jews in general, and the powers-that-were in particular, hated the Romans and hated the Samaritans. They liked hating them: it helped them feel self-righteous and superior. Besides, we all need identifiable enemies to help define who were are and who we are not. Even Jesus allowed that: “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way.” – Lk 6.26. Jesus wasn’t denying the responsibility to be discerning; Jesus was talking about how we treat our enemies.

He told a story to clarify both who our neighbor is: our neighbor is our enemy. At the same time, He described how we ought to treat our neighbor/enemy.

This was not popular with the self-righteous, comfortable Jews. It threatened their theology and their lifestyle; it intruded upon their religious categories and comfort zones. It was irritating and disruptive. They resisted it and, in the end, killed the Source of the menace.

Next: Jesus the Holy Irritation, Part Two

In the Western world during these nascent years of the 21st Century, we don’t have the Romans or Samaritans to despise. Those of us in the United States are not presently being subjugated by an external power such as the Romans and most of us are half-breeds like the Samaritans. But we do have our enemies.

We deplore the activities of abortionists and their killing mills, where millions of emerging image-bearers have been scraped into eternity like unwanted barnacles or vacuumed out as though they were nothing more than dust that’s collected around the baseboards of our homes. The disregard for human life is mind-numbing and intolerable at the same time.

We detest those who promote same-sex relationships and marriages, seeking to normalize that which God calls an abomination. We rightly find their philosophy abhorrent and seek to protect our children and the children of others from being blindly drawn into a disturbing and sinful lifestyle.

We are angry with those who would seek to limit our freedom of religious expression even as they give carte blanche to every other form of so-called spirituality. The foundations of our culture are not only being rejected but are being restricted. If these groups are allowed to succeed, they will eliminate all vestiges of our faith.

Hated, too, are the evolutionists, journalists, psychologists, and every other “-ist” that seeks to marginalize Christianity and the basic tenets of our faith. We are engaged in spiritual warfare – this we know – and sometimes recall that we are battling forces unseen. Generally our assessment of the threat such individuals and groups pose are accurate and biblical.

But that is not the point. The point is this: How do we talk about them and treat them? How often do we pray for them?

Jesus said we should pray for them. That we should treat them even as the Samaritan treated the Jew he found lying on the side of the road. That we should count ourselves blessed when we are mistreated, misunderstood, and misrepresented by the enemies of God. And that our reaction should be humble, not angry or defensive or vindictive. Conciliatory, not condemning.

Our responses to those who threaten us and endanger those things that are dear to us should be miraculously different from how they react to us. We are not to speak disparagingly of them, or malign them, or cast aspersions on their character and motives. We are to pray for them and to treat them with dignity. We are to value them because they are slaves to spiritual forces of which they are completely unaware. They are blind and dead in their sins.

If the unbelieving people in the world are going to seriously consider our claims, they will have to first observe some seriously different behavior than what they anticipate. We are called to bless them and to be a blessing to them. We are to love them and do good to them.

In short, we are to show them the same sort of compassion, long-suffering (which implies patience in the face of contemptuous behavior), love, grace, and mercy that Jesus Christ had toward us when we were ungodly and opposed to Him. The very same love He has for us now as a group of people who know better, but often fail to behave as we should.

Non-Christians are only doing what they are moved and ordered to do by their master; they are doing the best they can do. We are called to no less: to do that which our Master desires and commands, and to do so as best we can in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Over at Evangelical Outpost, Joe Carter is calling for blogs to follow up on something that Dallas Willard’s wrote entitled “Jesus the Logician.” Here’s the abstract for Willard’s essay:

In understanding how discipleship to Jesus Christ works, a major issue is how he automatically present[s] himself to our minds. It is characteristic of most 20th century Christians that he does not automatically come to mind as one of great intellectual power: as Lord of universities and research institutes, of the creative disciplines and scholarship. The Gospel accounts of how he actually worked, however, challenge this intellectually marginal image of him and helps us to see him at home in the best of academic and scholarly settings of today, where many of us are called to be his apprentices.

Dallas Willard does not need me to tell him that he’s on to something, but I think he is. We don’t often think of Jesus as an intellectual, and perhaps we have underestimated His mind. We believe that He is omniscient (he knows all things) but don’t stop to consider how and what He thinks about all the things that He knows. Being a perfect being - even as a perfect human being during His first advent - Jesus’ powers of reasoning far exceeded anything that the world has seen before or since. And we won’t see it again until He returns.

What Evangelical Outpost is calling for, then, is to have Christian bloggers (Godblogs) pool their efforts to create a “comprehensive database outlining the ways in which Jesus used logic in his discourses.” To assist those who respond to the challenge, EO has provided a list of logical and rhetorical forms through which the teachings of Jesus can be analyzed. I didn’t find the rhetorical list very complete, but I saw enough to make me pause.

The problem, I think, is one that occurs Sunday after Sunday in thousands of pulpits around the world. It is a subtle error that Willard seems to have made and that EO is multiplying. It is this: eisogesis. Eisogesis is the error of reading into the text ideas, thoughts, motivations, purposes, forms, or anything else that are not there. For example, I read Mt 18.18-20:

“Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, that if two of you agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by My Father who is in heaven. For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst.”

Based on these words of Jesus, I claim this as a promise for prayer: if I can get one or two other Christians to join with me in prayer - and maybe especially if I say, “Father, I just really agree with that prayer” - then it shall be done for us by the Father. After all, isn’t that what Jesus said?

Well, no. I have read prayer into this passage (that is, I have eisogeted) because it sounds like Jesus could be talking about prayer, and because I’d like to have that kind of guarantee for my prayers. In context, however, Jesus is not talking about prayer at all: He’s talking about forgiveness, church discipline, and restoring a sinning Christian. If I exegete the passage, I draw out what is there; if I eisogete, I read into it what is not there.

Most (if not all) of the investigations into Jesus’ intellectual abilities over at EO are using Greek logic and rhetoric to evaluate Him. But Jesus was not Greek and He was not Western; He was Jewish and He was Eastern. These are two very different ways of thinking. And if I don’t use the right lens through which to view and analyze Him, I’m not going to get a clear or accurate picture. I might have fun doing it, and it might tickle my intellectual funny bone, but I really will not have learned anything about Jesus at all.

Apparently, there is some current debate on what language Jesus spoke. It has always been assumed that He spoke in Aramaic, but Greek was actually the common language of the day; furthermore, the entire New Testament was written in Greek, not Aramaic, by the men who heard Jesus speak. But - and this is important - whatever language Jesus might have used, He thought like a Jew, not a Greek.

I am no expert on Jewish rhetorical devices, philosophy, or logical forms. I don’t even know if they have those types of categories - well, I do know they have philosophy and rhetoric, but they’re different than what we Westerners have. When I was in college, a friend and I shared the gospel with an Oriental student. We explained that Jesus was the only way to God and, to our surprise and delight, the student agreed! And then he went on to say that Hinduism and Buddism and other religions were also ways to God.

I thought the guy was nuts but fortunately kept my mouth shut. He explained that, in his way of thinking, to say that something or someone was the only way did not rule out other ways. I still don’t understand how that can be, but I’m sure he was just as puzzled that I didn’t get it.

Jesus certainly didn’t go that far, but His thinking was nevertheless more Eastern than Western. Perhaps this kind of thinking was why Paul, the Jewish rabbi, could teach sovereign election in one chapter (Rom 9) and then immediately follow it with a chapter on human responsibility (Rom 10). For Paul, there wasn’t a problem.

I searched the internet to find papers and books on the subject, but didn’t find much. I was able to locate some books on Amazon by Brad Young, who has written a lot about the Jewish influences underlying Jesus’ teachings. I have ordered three of them and, when I’ve gotten through them, I’ll let you know what’s there.

All this is to say, “Be careful how you read the Bible. It may not be saying what you think it is saying.” To understand Jesus, Paul, Moses, David, John, Jeremiah, or any other writer we have to be able to think like they think and understand the message as their original audience would have understood it. It is a lot of work, and it takes a lot of time, but we are handling the word of God. It is worth whatever it costs us to see God more accurately.